


Imposter Syndrome

by CatgirlTheCrazy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Archivist Sasha James, Elias Bouchard Being a Bastard, M/M, archival assistant Jon, not Jon, sad ending with a faint silver lining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23541313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatgirlTheCrazy/pseuds/CatgirlTheCrazy
Summary: Martin doesn't have much left of the real Jonathan Sims. He doesn't even have a face. Not a real one. Just a recording on a tape recorder.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 39
Kudos: 256





	1. Chapter 1

"Come on…" Martin strains against the super glue cap. " _Come on."_ The damn thing won't move. Frustrated, knowing it's a dumb idea but with no better ones to hand, Martin grips the cap between his teeth and twists.

"What are you doing?"

Martin yelps and fumbles the glue bottle. He frantically grabs for it, but his flailing arms just knock the tape recorder off the table and send it clattering onto the floor. He scrambles to pick it up. _Please don't be broken, please don't be broken._ There doesn't seem to be any damage. No new damage, anyway.

(He fails to notice that the record button was pressed on by the fall)

Jonathan Sims, Martin's fellow archival assistant and target of an extremely inconvenient crush, raises an eyebrow at him. "Um, sorry, I didn't see you there," Martin mumbles. "You startled me." Curse Jon and his inconvenient good looks. He'd always had a weakness for dark hair and hawklike features.

Jon grunts. "I suppose that's to be expected, given the circumstances." He glances around the storage room. "No worms?"

"What? No, not in here, anyway. I've seen a few around the institute. Been stomping on all of them. Kind of satisfying, really." 

Jon grimaces. "Lovely. You never answered my question by the way."

Martin racks his brain, but the last few minutes are a fuzzy, giddy panic to him. "Sorry, which question is that?"

Jon makes an inpatient noise. "What you were doing just now." He motions with his hand.

Martin glances at the tape recorder. "Oh, that. Just trying to fix the tape recorder."

"You? Fix a tape recorder? I thought your degree was in parapsychology."

Guilt gnaws at his insides. Martin does _not_ want Jon thinking too much about his qualifications. "It's nothing complicated! Just one of the buttons broke off. Thought I'd try and glue it back on." He looks at the glue bottle morosely. "Or at least, I was. This seems to be glued shut."

"And you thought you'd pry it off… with your teeth? You do realize that's a good way to end up in A&E with your mouth glued shut." The raised eyebrow is back. Jon's good at that. Unfairly good at it. It makes Martin's insides leap with excitement. It also makes him want to curl up in a corner and die of embarrassment.

"I know, I know, it was stupid. I'm just frustrated, I guess." 

"Understandable, I suppose. Not exactly pleasant accommodations here in storage." Jon pauses. "Are you alright down here? Do you have everything you need?" 

"What, me? Oh I'm fine. Totally fine. No need to worry about me." He laughs nervously.

"I believe current circumstances have proven there is plenty of cause to worry." Jon coughs and looks away, his cheeks darkening. Martin has to suppress a lovesick grin. Jon always does this when he crosses his own personal definition of professional boundaries. Which as far as Martin can tell, encompass pretty much anything approaching genuine friendship. Not that Jon is very good at staying inside those boundaries these days. Not since the Prentiss incident.

"Anyway," Jon says, recovering himself. "Do you still have those files on Pinhole Books? Sasha said she'd assigned them to you." He's all business now, as if he hadn't just unbent enough to be outright friendly. 

"Those? I think they're somewhere in my desk. Why?"

"Just looking into a few things related to Leitner."

"Alright. I'll try to find them after lunch."

Jon nods, and starts to leave, but hesitates. "You might want to try hot water." He leaves.

Martin heaves a heartfelt sigh. Then he realizes the tape recorder has been recording the whole time.

* * *

  
Months later, Jane Prentiss attacks. Jonathan Sims flees into Artifact Storage to hide. Something else comes out.

* * *

"Here you are Martin."

Martin blinks bleary eyes at the steaming mug that's just been set in front of him. He looks up to see Jon, a kind expression in his eyes. "You made me tea?"

"Of course." Jon smiles down at him. "You do it for me often enough. Seemed only fair." 

"Wow, um. Thanks." Martin sips the tea. It's brewed exactly how he likes it: hot and strong with plenty of cream and sugar. "This is… this is really good!"

"Glad to hear it. And how've you been doing? It must be good to have your own place again." 

"Not bad. Got a new flat not far from the old one." He'd lost the lease on the old place during his months in the archives. Not that he could have stomached going back there. There might still be worms. "Still unpacking boxes from the old place. At least the neighbors are quiet."

Jon nods. "Say, Tim and I were going to step out a bit early for drinks tonight. You want to come?"

Martin straightens. "Y- yeah, that'd be great." At that point, Sasha pops in with questions about the Herbert Knox file, and the conversation ends. Jon gives him a little wave and wanders back to his desk.

It isn't until later that Martin realizes: the rushing giddiness is gone. He'd had an entire conversation with Jon being nothing but nice to him, and his insides hadn't done one single swoop. He's still plenty fond of the man, but only that. Is his crush evaporating already? That was quick. Martin had expected to be pining after Jon for months yet. 

It's probably for the best. Nothing would have come of it, except possibly Martin making a fool of himself. More of a fool of himself. And really, it's remarkable Martin ever had a thing for Jon to begin with. He doesn't usually go for blond hair.

* * *

Sasha takes Tim and Martin out to lunch. That's not particularly unusual. Jon is out following up a case, so he can't come, but that's not unheard of either. It isn't until she leads them away from their usual place and towards a park that Martin worries. He's not at all prepared for what she tells them.

"What do you remember about case 0070107? Amy Patel's statement?"

Martin and Tim glance at each other. "That's the one where her neighbor was eaten and replaced by an evil drain pipe, right?" Tim said. 

"I remember something about… changing photos?" Martin ventures.

Sasha pulls out a tape recorder. She doesn't look at it as she presses play. She doesn't even look at them. She's staring at some indefinite point in space to Martin's left, like it's a window to hell. The recorder plays.

 _"You're aware it's pronounced Kuh-ly-o-pee, right?"_ A man's voice, acerbic and dry, that Martin doesn't recognize. 

_"Really? I've always heard it pronounced ka-lee-o-pee."_ Sasha's voice. 

_"I suppose technically there's no correct pronunciation. But the organs are named after the Greek muse Calliope, so…"_

Tim frowns. "Isn't that Leanne Denikin's statement? Who's that you're talking to?"

Sasha closes her eyes. "Jonathan Sims. The real one."

* * *

It takes them a week to find a way to deal with NotJon. During that week, Martin has to pretend that nothing has changed. That he isn't aware that his coworker and one time crush has been replaced by this… thing that calls itself his name. Martin has to smile when he says hello. Thank him when he brings tea. Laugh when he tells a joke. Just like normal. 

(Were any of those things normal Jon behavior?)

Sasha's background in artifact storage provides the answer: an old diving bell with a penchant for disappearing people to infinite crushing depths. In his nightmares, Martin can still the the way the kind, smiling face distorted, when it realized it had been caught. The way its limbs stretched into a grotesque parody of the human form as dark water sucked it in. 

And then… things are normal again. There isn't even a police investigation. Jon apparently had no surviving family to raise a fuss about his disappearance. They get drinks, but even that is hard. It's hard to remember which of their fond stories belong to the real Jon, and which to the imposter.

* * *

One day, Martin finds an unmarked tape in the storage room. Thinking it's an old poetry tape he forgot to label, he pops it in a recorder to play. He could use a pick me up.

It's not poetry. The recording starts with a loud clatter, like the recorder being dropped. Then, Martin's voice. " _Um, sorry, I didn't see you there. You startled me_."

" _I suppose that's to be expected, given the circumstances_." A man's voice. Acerbic and dry. Martin can't breathe. He remembers this conversation. The voice on the tape is saying all the words that Martin remembers. It's not the same voice. 

How long has this tape been sitting here? NotJon had hidden all the tapes containing the real Jon's voice, but apparently he'd missed this one. If Martin had found this earlier, if he'd managed to keep his poetry tapes in some kind of order _for once_ … But Jon had already been dead by the time Martin had first met the imposter. His research on the NotThem made that abundantly clear. They might have caught on sooner. But it wouldn't have saved him. 

" _You never answered my question by the way._ "

" _Sorry, which question is that?_ "

God. Had it really been that obvious, how much he'd liked Jon? Martin on the tape sounds like his head has floated off like a child's lost balloon. Jon's annoyance is audible even via recording. He remembers recognizing it as cover for genuine concern. It's so totally unlike the kind, smiling man Martin has known for the past year. How the hell did he never notice the switch?

Maybe he had. Hadn't his crush dissipated around that time? That makes Martin queasy to think about, but he clings to it anyways. That crush might be the truest thing he has left for Jon.

_"Are you alright down here? Do you have everything you need?"_

Martin blinks away wet, stinging tears. He remembers clear as day the kind and concerned look on Jon's face as he'd said these exact words. Except… those memories were fake. Had the real Jon looked at him like that? What would that even look like? Martin still doesn't know what the real Jon looked like. All he has is Melanie's vague description ("Short. Greying hair. Bit of an arsehole. Definitely not white."). All Martin's photos show only the imposter. He hasn't been able to find any Polaroids. God knows he's tried. He spent a week tracking down old yearbooks and photo albums and anything else he could think of. Plenty of photos of the imposter at varying ages. Nothing else.

Martin tries to construct an image of Jon. Take the few details he does have and paste them over the memories of the imposter. It feels less real than the fake.

Maybe that's the real horror of this monster. When someone you care about dies, you can normally take comfort in your memories of them. The NotThem has stolen that from him. No, worse than stolen. Corrupted. Taken Martin's memories of Jon and plastered them over with a false, smiling face. 

All he has now is a tape and a voice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't expecting to write a second part, but this idea wouldn't leave me alone.

Martin burns some statements. Elias is not happy. Martin takes the opportunity to vent.

"I remember the way you looked at Jon after the attack." Martin knows he should be afraid, bracing himself for the horrible knowledge Elias will force on him. But his anger is like a runaway lorry. It's all he can do to steer. "You knew it wasn’t him. And I reckon you knew Prentiss was lurking under the Institute, too, and you did nothing. I reckon you also knew what having that table would do and you did nothing about that either. You could've stopped that thing killing him, and you _didn't_ . Why?" Elias doesn't answer. Martin slams his fist into the table. " ** _Why?_** "

Elias huffs a soft laugh. "Such an intensity of feeling for a man who treated you rather badly while he was alive. Honestly, I'm surprised you don't prefer the imposter. He was much more agreeable."

Martin is breathing heavily now. "Shut. Up."

Elias smiles. "Ah, but of course the differences get quite blurry, don't they? That is the nature of the Not Them, isn't it? It doesn't have to do nearly as much work as one might expect. The mind has a remarkable way of smoothing over the little inconsistencies, all on its own." He leans in close, fingers gripping the edge of Martin's desk. His predatory smirk contains no traces of humor. "Let me give you a refresher on what Jonathan Sims was _really_ like. 

Martin gasps. Images, thoughts, sounds invade his mind, fill up every part of his senses. Jon yelling at him. A full foot shorter than him, yet somehow able to make Martin feel backed into a corner by his mere presence. _"A dog? In the archives? What the hell possessed you?"_

Jon glowering at him. Pushing his eyeglasses up a crooked nose so they glint in the florescent lights. _"You thought that spending three days interviewing every Angela in Bexley was a good use of your time. Really."_

Jon dismissing him. Curls of greying hair falling distractingly over his forehead. _"Claustrophobic. Of course. God forbid you get any real work done."_

Elias isn't done. "And then of course there's the matter of how he died. Sasha's never let you listen to that tape, has she? She told you it was because there's nothing to hear. It was quick and sudden, with hardly any time for pain."

Jon, inside artifact storage, backing away from something… not quite right. _"Who's there?! I see you!"_ Martin can feel Jon's terror pulsing through his veins.

"What a liar our archivist is."

Tears are streaming down Martin's face. "Don't. Please." As if he has the power to stop it.

That _thing_ rushes at him. Jon's screams fill every corner of the room, but Martin is barely aware of it because he _feels_ what happens to Jon. Like being peeled apart in excruciatingly thin layers. Like pain that will end only when there is nothing left capable of feeling.

Martin is slumped over the desk, sobbing. Elias leans in, his voice vibrating with tightly controlled rage. _"Don’t burn any more statements."_ Martin doesn't even see him leave. He sits there, wracked with heaving sobs, for an unknown amount of time. Then those sobs slowly morph into laughter.

How long has it been since Elias actually, genuinely cared for someone? Let alone lost someone he cared about? A long time, most likely. Probably long enough for him to forget what it's like. It's the only explanation for why Elias seems totally ignorant of what an incredible _gift_ he has given Martin. Ironic, for an avatar of omniscience. Yes, this knowledge hurts. Yes, the first hand memory of Jon's death will haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

But Elias has given Martin back Jon's _face_. The real Jon's face, indelible and fixed forever in Martin's memory. _"I believe current circumstances have proven there is plenty of cause to worry."_ Now Martin knows what that conversation on the tape looked like.

**Author's Note:**

> Some elements of this story (namely NotJon's appearance and his being nicer than Real Jon) owe their inspiration to fanart from [these](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/614338187342594048/archivist-sasha-and-notjon-who-just-looks-like) [posts](https://skyberia.tumblr.com/post/614477079959027712/some-further-notjon-thoughts-bonus-when-sasha) by skyberia. I highly recommend checking them out (plus, the second link has a bonus happy ending that this fic doesn't).


End file.
